Sunday, June 19, 2011

When the State Breaks a Man

"How much does the State weigh?" Josef Stalin asked an underling who had been ordered to extract a confession from an enemy of his regime. Stalin understood that, given enough time, agents of State-sanctioned cruelty can break any man.

Ball and his family were casualties in what he calls a federal "war on men." He wasn't exaggerating -- and he has a lot of company.

The federally subsidized domestic violence industry operates a bit like the hypothetical Von Nuemann Machine: Placed into a material-rich environment, it will sustain and replicate itself by destroying and assimilating everything within its field of influence. One useful sci-fi example is the robotic Planet Killer from the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" -- an immense, funnel-shaped engine of destruction propelled by the remnants of the worlds it destroys (according to one deutero-canonical source, the Planet Killer uses the same material to generate replicas of itself).

As Baskerville points out in his horrifying study Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, "it is no exaggeration to say that the existence of family courts, and virtually every issue they adjudicate -- divorce, custody, child abuse, child-support enforcement, even adoption and juvenile crime -- depend on one overriding principle: remove the father." When a family is broken up, each child "becomes a walking bundle of cash" -- not for the custodial parent, but for a huge and expanding population of tax-fattened functionaries who "adopt as their mission in life the practice of interfering with other people's children."

Thomas Ball, like millions of others, learned that the people who choose this profession have an unfailing ability to exploit even the tiniest opportunity to invade a home and destroy a family.

One evening in April 2001, Mr. Ball suffered a momentary lapse of patience with a disobedient four-year-old daughter and slapped her face. He left the house at his wife's suggestion. When he called her a short time later, he learned that his wife -- "the type that believes that people in authority actually know what they are talking about" -- had called the police, who told her that her "abusive" husband wasn't permitted to sleep in his own home that night. Ball was arrested at work the following day. Under the conditions of his bail, he wasn't allowed to ask his wife what had possessed her to call the police.

Years later Ball would learn that if his wife hadn't called the police and accused her husband of abuse, she would have been arrested as an accessory -- leaving the children at the mercy of New Hampshire's utterly despicable Division of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF).

Despairing over being wrested away from everyone he loved, Dot's grade-school age grandson Austin -- who had literally been dragged screaming from his grandparents' home -- tried to commit suicide. This led to confinement in a psychiatric hospital and involuntary "treatment" with mind-destroying psychotropic drugs. For New Hampshire's child-snatchers, the phrase "nobody gets their kids back" translates into a willingness to destroy the captive children by degrees, rather than allow any successful challenge to their supposed authority.

The instant the police intervened in the domestic affairs of Thomas Ball's household, his family's destruction became inevitable. The officers were required -- not by law, but by official policy that followed profit incentives created by Washington -- to make an arrest. In a similar fashion, and for the same reason, prosecutors are forbidden to drop domestic abuse cases under any circumstances.

Ball recalled that he was eventually found not guilty, much to the visible disgust of the be-robed dispenser of official injustice who presided at the trial. But this made no material difference: His wife -- who divorced him six months after his arrest -- was now a consort of the State, his children were its property. His innocence notwithstanding, Ball was given an open-ended sentence of serfdom -- and the prospect of being sent to debtor's prison -- through government-mandated "child support" system. Furthermore, he wasn't permitted to see his children, despite the fact that a jury had found him innocent.

"I lost visitation with my two daughters when I got arrested. One was the victim-the other was the witness. After a not guilty, I expected to get visitation with my girls. But the divorce judge ... decreed that counseling was in order and they would decide when we would reunite."

The policy options that are rewarded by federal subsidies don't include allowing an innocent man to reunite with his children. Consigning him to the State-aligned "domestic counseling" industry -- which was apparently co-designed by August Mobius and Franz Kafka -- is a much more profitable alternative.

"Judges routinely use our children as bargaining chips," Ball explained. "Get the adult into counseling, continue the case for a year, and then drop it. This will open up the docket for the new arrests coming in next week. These judges that use our children are not honorable. Which is why I never use the term 'Your Honor' any more. I just call them judge."

Ball's experiences, once again, are all but identical to those endured by millions of others. Dr. Baskerville offers a potent and infuriating summary:

"A parent [generally a father] whose children are taken away by a family court is only at the beginning of his troubles. The next step comes as he is summoned to court and ordered to pay as much as two-thirds of even more of his income as `child support' to whomever has been given custody. His wages will immediately be garnished and his name will be entered on a federal register of `delinquents.' This is even before he has had a chance to become one, thought it is likely that the order will be backdated, so he will already be a delinquent as he steps out of the courtroom. If the ordered amount is high enough, and the backdating is far enough, he will be an instant felon and subject to immediate arrest."

The sinews of this system are the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OSCE) and its state-level affiliates. Some idea of the scope of the Regime's war on fathers is found in this comparison: In 2007, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the spearhead of the "war on drugs," employed a total of 4,600 armed field agents; the OSCE at the time boasted more than 60,000 enforcement agents, all of whom are permitted to carry firearms under the "Deadbeat Parents Enforcement Act."

When brought to bear against an isolated individual, the weight of this State apparatus will eventually destroy the victim. With each year, Ball's financial condition deteriorated and he became deeply mired in intractable despair. By the time he ended his life on June 16, Ball was a 58-year-old Vietnam Era Army Veteran who had been unemployed for two years. Owing to the fact that he couldn't pay the amount of child support extorted from him, Ball was quite likely going to be sent to jail on the following morning.

His only consolation, the company of his children, was sadistically withheld from him. The unfathomably arrogant and completely unaccountable functionaries who did so are people who have learned how to monetize the misery of the innocent.

Ball's manifesto is a work of tortured eloquence. Rather than being the chaotic outpouring of a deranged personality, the letter is cogently organized, laden with impressive amounts of detailed research, and admirably epigrammatic. The lucidity Ball displayed in explaining his decision to kill himself by the most painful method imaginable underscores not merely the depth of his despair but also of the entrenched corruption and viciousness of the people who had demolished his family.

The leitmotif in Ball's letter is the phrase "Second Set of Books," a phrase that refers to the "policies, procedures and protocols" actually followed by bureaucrats and their enforcers in defiance of the "First Set of Books" -- that is, the federal and state constitutions.

"You never cover the Second Set of Books your junior year in high school," Ball pointed out. That because we are not suppose to have a Second Set of Books." The Second Set of Books contain writings that are too holy to be inspected by mere Mundanes. Those of us who don't belong to the Sanctified Brotherhood of Official Coercion are required to behave as if there is some continuing relevance to the First Set of Books. Maintaining this official fiction is necessary in order to convince the credulous -- well, those who pay attention to such matters -- that it is possible to receive redress of grievances through the same system that has aggrieved them.

Like millions of other victims of the State's "domestic violence" apparatus, Ball came to understand that the system cannot be reformed from within:

"On one hand we have the law. On the other hand we have what we are really going to do-the policies, procedures and protocols. The rule of law is dead. Now we have 50 states with legal systems as good as any third world banana republic. Men are demonized and the women and children end up as suffering as well. So boys, we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses. The Second Set of Books originated in Washington. But the dirty deeds are being carried out by our local police, prosecutors and judges."

Tunisian martyr Mohamad Bouazizi shortly before his death.

Rather than voting them out, Ball insists that it is necessary to "Burn Them Out" through arson attacks on the appropriate bureaucratic facilities.

Human beings have an instinctive, primordial fear of fire. Burning to death is a prolonged agony in which pain receptors operate at full capacity. The torment Thomas Ball experienced was sufficient, in his mind, to eclipse the horrors of death by fire.

My thanks to everyone who has donated to help keep the Pro Libertate blog (as well as Pro Libertate Radio) on-line. I'm sending a copy of Global Gun Grab to anyone who donates $10 or more. Use the PayPal button below, or contact me via e-mail (WNGrigg[at]msn[dot]com) for snail mail directions. Thanks again, and God bless!

The courts went through a kind of "backlash" a few years ago where they went against the mothers - no matter what - in their sick attempt to "correct" the bias against fathers.I had done nothing wrong, nothing criminal, nothing abusive - nothing that could fit in any of those categories in anyway - and yet the court saw fit to take away custody from me and fully give it to my ex husband, even though he had emotionally abused me for many years. His behaviour has continued until this day through the use of our heavy handed "Family Maintenance" agency to ensure that I have barely been able to keep my head above water all these years.

I have been on the verge of suicide many times over the years but couldn't bring myself to leave my children in such a final way. I live with the hope that "tomorrow" will be better even though 3 of 4 have now finished high school and have never lived with me since their father and I broke up 14 years ago.

I have talked to my children's father about this many times and he feigns innocence every time, "It's not me, my lawyer said that." "It's not me, it's Family Maintenance" Of course, neither of these works without his direction.

Everytime I would go to court to request more access, he would bring outrageous allegations and the court would accept whatever he said without needing ANY EVIDENCE and I would lose.

The court system is NOT a "justice" system. If it were, my children would have enjoyed growing up with two parents.

Thanks to the court pandering to the highest dollar, my children have grown up not knowing that they were never abandoned by their mother, but were actually loved deeply and fought for endlessly.

i hope the folks who want a marriage amendment to the constitution see how they are being used and how this will turn out if the feds ever get constitutional authority to determine who can and who cannot get married.

1. I disagree strongly about the quality of Ball's writing. It was very muddy and full of jargon only useful when spoken, and sometimes impossible when written, because it lacks the essential tone of voice.

2. To others who will inevitably chime in with their own stories, the whole point is not the bias in the system, but the very existence of a system which involves itself in the private affairs of families. The state cannot possibly do right on most things, and is particularly wrong on this.

Men really do get it from all sides today. Just look at how males are portrayed in television today. Men are portrayed as dumb, ignorant, aggressive brutes, abusers, etc...The sad thing is that this sort of behavior in many ways has been accepted and promoted as normal and common for men.

The same goes for women too. The nurturing side of a woman has been downplayed and even ridiculed in media today. Today women are expected to be like men, to compete with men on every single front at the expense of their femininity. But Men and women are meant to compliment each other...to make up for each others short-comings....not to compete in every facet of life.

Up is down, down is up. Good is evil, evil is good. The whole world seems to be turning itself upside down.

My husband and I have built a strong supportive united family over the past 40 years ~ children with spouses we love as our own, and granchildren who are our hearts' delight. The importance of communication, commitment, and loving involvement by all family members for maintaining and strengthening healthy family living is somthing I cannot stress enough. So many tragedies like the one you have described could be prevented when dealt with properly with the help and counsel of experienced extended family members.

What a tragedy. I suppose this only reinforces my belief that sailing under the radar screen and having as little contact with any State tentacle is the only way to breath as free as one can. To attack them head-on only emboldens these pencil neck geeks into thinking they have to "do something" in order to correct a situation they themselves have created. They will never see how they've been responsible except by some miracle or having to endure the same. What caught my attention was this tidbit.

"Years later Ball would learn that if his wife hadn't called the police and accused her husband of abuse, she would have been arrested as an accessory"....

Bottom line is that Ball's wife set the wheels in motion. Nobody put a gun to her head and forced her to either call the cops or rat out her spouse with phony abuse charges. She was stupid/conditioned enough to call and then likewise led from her statist nose ring by governmental handlers. Again it's a tragedy all around.

While I realize that this is a sarcastic rhetorical question, the answer is, of course not. Neocons (and neoconettes, as in this case) never do. Coulter, were she ever to become aware of Thomas Ball's act, would no doubt have cheered him on, bloodthirsty neoconette that she is, and would probably even have encouraged people to bring marshmallows and hot dogs to the Cheshire County Courthouse steps.

BTW, a big part of Coulter's moronic hostility toward Ron Paul, and toward libertarians in general, is rooted in the fact that the Libertarian Party, at both the state and national level, refused to endorse her as a congressional "libertarian" candidate from Connecticut in, I believe, '04. Thinking that it was her RIGHT to hijack the LP for her own selfish ends (and how dare they see through her paper-thin facade!), she threw a tantrum and has had it out for libertarians ever since.

Will, you mention Ann Coulter aka "Skeletorina" as poo pooing Ron Paul. This is so typical of her ilk: beltway "conservatives" who live in their ivory towers high above the fetid Potomac swamp where the gas bags seek ever more inventive ways to kill or enslave us.

What Mr. Ball endured before he endured his death is undeniably wrong. However, choosing the method he chose, to say nothing of killing himself, is just stupid. All he has done has emboldened the government and other observers to simply look at his action and say, "it's a good thing we removed those kids from that nut." He should have just left the country.

I haven't posted on this forum in awhile, though still an avid reader of Will's columns. Will, thank you for addressing this topic.

As one who has been through the 'meat grinder' I am willing to state that Mr. Ball accurately summed up the nature of the kangaroo 'family law' courts quite well.

The practice of 'family law' is nothing less than an institutionalized extortion racket that exploits children. It must be abolished as it is corrupt beyond any hope of reform. Any who believe otherwise are either naive, intentionally ignorant and/or feminist apologists.

@Up the Stairs - I considered leaving the country or just disappearing. It was mighty tempting. You just don't do that when you have kids, you endure to the breaking point as Mr. Ball did. It is easy for someone such as yourself who is clearly ignorant of how the system works to armchair quarterback - but you know not of what you speak and you should remain silent.

@Linda Todd Gahrib - there is more to your story than you are sharing. How do I know? Because the rate of sole or primary custody going to women in this country is 84% (or higher in a place like ID) and has been relatively constant for 30 years. In this misandrist country a woman pretty much has to light up a crack pipe in a court room to not get the kids, the house, half the assets and a check every month. Maybe your story is accurate, but I'm skeptical.

Like Mr. Ball, last year I lost my job of 23 yrs. At the time I was paying $20K/yr in child $upport (that is after tax dollars). Fortunately, I knew that if that circumstance arrived what I would be up against. It cost $6K in attorney fees and took nearly four months to get child $upport lowered (and I paid $6K in extortion/c$ during that period). I was fortunate in that I could and did prepare.

My only disagreement with Mr. Ball is his advocacy of arson as it is too indiscriminate and easily spun in the media. As I stated to my attorney, in writing, "if a few attorneys and judges have to be lynched to get these laws changed, I'm ok with that". Will may not appreciate my saying so, but I'm quite in favor of stringing these folks up from the nearest available lamp post.

As Will correctly noted in a piece he did a few years on fathers treatment in the family courts - "there's a reason they have metal detectors in the courthouse" and it isn't those in the criminal courts. It is the kangaroo family courts.

If the kangaroo family courts are not abolished there will be violence and it will be deserved.

@Linda Todd Gahrib - there is more to your story than you are sharing. How do I know? Because the rate of sole or primary custody going to women in this country is 84% (or higher in a place like ID) and has been relatively constant for 30 years. In this misandrist country a woman pretty much has to light up a crack pipe in a court room to not get the kids, the house, half the assets and a check every month. Maybe your story is accurate, but I'm skeptical.

As well you should be since the only two likely causes are either the husband was the lesser of the two evils (see Keven Federline getting Brittney Spears' kids) or Satan himself intervened on behalf of an abusive father.

@Ed HurstThis comment was directed to 'Will' but it just turns my stomach.The man's final letter, after he was destroyed by a hateful state and decided that self-immolation was better than living as a serf is just so disturbing...but I read it, to be a witness to the suffering. It was written with his heart, with research with his understanding that he was phucked, that his wife and children were also phucked - how that must have pained him. And you criticize his, what, grammer and style. Thank you, you enable me to continue to feel that we will get, as citizens of the Second State of Books, exactly what we deserve. One would think, incorrectly, then that people that read blogs such as this have not lost their dignity and compassion, and feeling for their suffering fellow man, woman and child. One would be wrong. There is sucha a lack of compassion I am almost speachless. Excuse me while I barf here. Excellently written, and accepted testimony, and very very sad. So many smart people in the world. So few human beings.

Yes, we have lost our compassion, and we are going to get exactly what we deserve as jungle jane said. The man was driven to total despair, and we seldom do things exactly right under those circumstances, but he so well conveyed the message. The hurt that the state is so willing to inflict upon us all is there for us all to see right there on those courthouse steps.

I've been through a similar situation. My daughter has been kept from me for several years, basically because I'm poor. I finally was able to save up, hire an attorney - and now I'm getting some consideration from family court.

The only concern I have with this article is - what are women supposed to do who are truly being abused? And how do we stop women who aren't being abused from using the system inappropriately?

My mom and sisters are like that - they behave as victims to use the system for their personal gain...and I hate them for it. I also teach my son to always be respectful toward women - to know that he's more physically powerful, and it should never be used to hurt someone of lesser physical stature. But there will always be men who do push women around...and as a society, we can't just ignore it.

I'm all for boycotting the system otherwise - I think the author is right. I hate cops, DAs, judges...and social workers for the most part. I'd really rather not have anything to do with them for the rest of my life.

Personally, I don't believe we can stop what's been started...but it might be a good idea to require recordings of all interactions between state agencies (including cops and social workers) and citizens. And a better level of review over all of it.

Another thing I really hate is people who don't have children judging any parent. Anybody that has any power in that capacity should be required to have children of their own...to be able to understand it.

"Another thing I really hate is people who don't have children judging any parent. Anybody that has any power in that capacity should be required to have children of their own...to be able to understand it."

I have to agree with you here about 50%. Having no children myself, I'm sure there is much I don't really understand, however, once upon a time, I was a little child myself. That is one universal truth about every human on the planet. I was a child with imperfect parents. I know what that made me, so yeah, I don't really understand the nitty-gritty details of parenthood, but I do know plenty about the dynamic. Is it only parents who want to do bad things to their kids who play the "don't-judge-me-your-not-a-parent" card?

I can't "judge" Mr. Ball, but I can "discern" that slapping a four-year-old child on the face with enough force to cut her little lip for a childish activity that was annoying but not dangerous seems to indicate that the man did, indeed, have anger issues and it probably wasn't the first time he'd gone over the edge with his wife and kids. The infamous slap could have been that one final straw that got the cops called this time.

Also, as a grown-up human now, I can also "discern" that committing suicide is the fool's and the coward's way out. Did it not occur to him that his girls would someday be adults and not under the control of the system or their mom? Now, any chance his children had of having a father once they were old enough to be out from under the system's jackboot is irrevocably over. His suicide makes a mockery of his last paragraph telling the girls he loved them and family is all they have and they should always stick together, no matter what. Yeah, right. He should have put his money where his mouth was.

I'm all for dismantling the disgusting system that is passed off as "the government;" it certainly tries patience and souls, is evil as can be and not worth the monopoly money printed to fund it, but this Mr. Ball can hardly be considered the poster boy of the tragedy of the system. He claimed affection for Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but had no ability (desire?) to rest in Jesus and ride out this egregious injustice. Rather than do something heroic, like mabye risking arrest to visit his girls on the sly and perhaps end up in a running gun battle with the cops and taking a few out with him, he just goes poofdershmokin on the couthouse steps.

Um. I think I'd like to hear what his wife has to say. I just don't buy the story that he's the slightly-flawed but entirely innocent one in all this.

Nevertheless, innocent or not, it is not the business of government to regulate families. One of you asked what are women who truly are abused to do? Well, grow a set, first off, as they say. Second, do anything except go whining to the "government." Next time the bastard beats you up, wait for him to go to sleep, then staple the bedsheets to the bed all around him, then get a good, solid broomstick and start working him over. When he wakes up, let him know that he beat you for the very last time.

These cases are the result of a society which has thrown God, justice, the rule of law, integrity, and common sense to the wind and replaced them all with screwed-up shrinks, corrupt and insane public policy makers and judges and power-lust and greedy politicians who abide by the rules of radical feminist's, wacko environmental terrorists, sexual perverts, inept and insane academics/social scientists/psychologist/shrinks, and government workers who believe:

1. The natural family, one man and one woman must be destroyed in order to appease the wacko freaks and God-haters.

2. The state, i.e., the insane/corrupt/greedy/immoral workers hired only because they are insane/corrupt/greedy and immoral, is now the god, the religion, and the arbitor of all human rigts, thoughts, and actions.

3. Men and children are to be thrown to the wolves if they interfere with the "there are no sexual genders nor any abnormal sexual preferences" moonbats who also believe men and children are expendable if they dare to interfer with a woman's "choices".

As a result of extreme prejudice in the family courts, over 4500 men commit suicide in the US every year. That's at least 3 times higher than all allied forces lost in both Iraq and Afghanistan even during the worst year of war there.

Make no mistake about it: it is a war against men. There is no "law" in war.

It's not just against men, hon. I'm a woman...and they are being just as brutal and unrealistic and disparaging against me. Honestly, I think it has more to do with economic resources. Now that I've hired a lawyer, I'm getting some consideration after five years of being treated like a dog-pile...

overwhelmingly, it IS a war against boys and men in ALL western countries

hon

I'm a woman...and they are being just as brutal and unrealistic and disparaging against me

no, "they" aren't, you're living in Lady La La Land

even a cursory glance at reality -- homelessness, poverty, incarceration rates and policies, false accusation, suicide, workplace mortality, exclusion from education and employment, and on and on, reveals a vast and joyous hatred for the male of the species that is now enshrined in both law and extra-legal policy and assumption (Second Set of Books) across the wimpified west

the treatment of boys and men in the west, and in amerika in particular, is nothing short of apartheid

thanks to William Grigg for this coverage of the matriarchy's destruction of yet another Useless Perpetrating Male

Mr. Ball was a martyr. God may or may not exist, but Satan sure does. Satan exists in those who drafted the laws, the police officers who make these arrests, employees of the state “child protective” system, and the lawyers that willfully dismantle families for profit. Self-immolation is a very, very, powerful message. In fact a similar event triggered a massive revolt against similar oppressive regimes in the Arab world. The American mass media failed to pick up this amazing home spun story of self inflicted hell fire. However, we hear of the aftermath triggered by the Tunisian self immolation event on a daily basis. Perhaps the American syndicated media is also controlled by Satan and do not want to expose the evil truth of their system. After all, Satan is a liar and a coward.Mr. Ball’s letter does an excellent job of exposing the system for what it is. He was found not guilty but Satan’s system still gets his daughters. Therefore, the letter is a call for action for other fathers experiencing the same hell-on-earth. Mr. Ball suggests the defense of the war against fathers be waged with Molotov Cocktails against the property of Child Protective Services, family law courthouses, i.e. the temples of Satan’s System. I’m not sure what the “second set of books” says about arson but I’m sure the penalty is minimal in respect to losing your children to Satan and his minions. Two-hots-and-a-cot just may be better than living in a car by the river. It certainly is more tolerable than burning alive on the courthouse steps.I can certainly empathize with a man’s wishes to send a collective hellfire message to a system that profits from stealing a man’s child when that child is the only thing he has left to live for. I wonder if the American mass media would pick up on a “Thomas J. Ball Night” event where millions of broken father’s toss Molotov Cocktails into the unoccupied temples of the system that destroyed their families. This story is not over and Thomas J. Ball did not take his life by self immolation in vain.

There has been an extremely intense and focused effort over the last 40 years to once and for all destroy the traditional family because it is the last bastion against total control of human life by the state. This article provides a good summary of where we were 6 years ago. It's worse now. Read and despair: http://toqonline.com/archives/v7n2/v7no2_Devlin.pdf